The Island of Bolay - Chapter 2 - novel about germ warfare, terrorist threat

BioTech and MedTech Keynote Speaker

Chapter 2 of Island of Bolay - thriller by Patrick Dixon. Published originally by Harper Collins, sold in Airports and bookshops, now available on Kindle.  Germ warfare agents have fallen into terrorist hands. An air ambulance doctor is soon running for his life, after discovering the deadly truth...

The 10.45        Zakintos, Greece

As John Bradley hung up,  thirty year old Dr David Miller strode into the tiny office of Zakintos Island hospital, slammed the door, stuffed the stethoscope in his pocket, flung his powerful six foot frame in the chair. He threw his broad feet on the walnut desk facing the wall and pulled a cigarette.  He was sweating in the afternoon heat, angry, brown hair all over the place, dark brown-green intensely alert eyes. He tore at collar and tie and pulled out his phone.

Mark Taylor, nineteen years old yesterday, was lying in a room chock full of old men, surrounded by crowds of women in black and numbers of children. Just one nurse for the whole corridor and she spoke no English. Julia Cousins, the flight-nurse, was cleaning Mark up - it was a hellish place to be sick. Families had to do their own nursing, best as they could.

Miller tried to dial Hugh, the pilot of Air Ambulance but the phone was engaged.

The white plaster wall by his right hand showed the red flecks of dead mosquitoes.  A beautifully carved wooden icon of Christ hung from a nail by the shuttered window.  Amanda would have liked it. The room reeked of disinfectant and pipe tobacco.

Miller meddled with the unlit cigarette, broke it twice and threw it in the bin.  He threw the other six away with the empty packet. A baby cried in the corridor.  For the third time that week he vowed he would never have another smoke. He watched as his shoes shed films of dust on newspapers which lay on the desk.  He glanced at the headlines. Troops guarding the Golden Dome of Jerusalem. Ten Muslims dead at the entrance, shot by Israeli soldiers. Yet another flare-up in a bloody month which had seen more deaths in Israel than in the previous five years.  Syria and Iran piling on the pressure again.

This was routine air ambulance. Not so big a challenge after three years as an army medic. Should have been killed outright. The boy had skidded off a scooter on gravel. No helmet. No shoes. Shorts and a shirt. Just like sixteen others in the last four months. Scooters should be banned.

Coming too fast round a hairpin,  he’d swerved against a wall, bounced into the road, slid along his bare side, ended in a ditch. Several broken vertebrae, massive grazes, skin missing down right leg and arm, possible skull fracture, three broken ribs on right chest wall. Lucky to be alive.  It was immoral of these bike companies not to warn people.  They should make them take helmets as condition for insurance if nothing else.

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